


Office Game

by charab



Series: Stamp Of Approval [9]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Hokage Tower, M/M, Paperwork ninjas, Subtle seduction is dead, Waiting for a kiss, kkir25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 03:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5401952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charab/pseuds/charab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Counting to ten should not make them all blush.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Office Game

**Author's Note:**

> Paperwork ninjas continue their adventures. Also, caught a bad cold all of a sudden, so I might fall behind a bit for the meme schedule. Doing my best to beat the flu back into submission and catch up the missed days. Anyhow. Enjoy.  
> Prompt: Waiting to be Kissed

During their training and active career, shinobis learned the importance of patience. They knew the importance of keeping their nerves in check when setting up an ambush, they noted the effort they were sometimes forced to put on their calm faces as they communicated with their primly dressed and dolled up clients who gave no thought to time-managing, and they embraced the opportunity to count to ten when everything went pear-shaped in less than a minute. Patience, for a shinobi, made sure that not only did they get paid well for the successful job, they also got to finish it with all their limbs and dignity intact – mostly. When it came to personal differences, some were better than others at practicing patience, which usually became apparent in the debates and discussions between the field operatives, with more or less hissed curses and harsh commands thrown into the mix.  
  
Or, as someone at the Administration pointed out during the morning coffee talk, it became visible in the way their Hokage glanced at Umino-san over the man's departure from Hokage Tower towards the Academy.  
  
Over the passing weeks after the unfortunate miscalculated encounter that one of their colleague had had with Umino-san's rumored stiff upper lip, the nins working at the administrative departments had established a routine of observation when it came to the two upper rank shinobis. Admittedly it became rather imperative after one other colleague from Internal Affairs Department had stepped into Hokage's Office one minute after the usual office hours and had gotten an eyeful of stiffness that had shown Umino-san's discussed mouth in a very different light. After the awkward ANBU guards had escorted the furiously blushing chuunin back to the safety of their staff room and she had managed to make her lungs work normal again and stop the nosebleed from soiling her gear any further, the leading bureaucrats had called in a strategy meeting for all departments in order to prevent any other incidents of such nature from happening.  
  
It had been decided that every shift were to start their work by sending out a three-man cell who checked the mood of their leader for the day, and then passed the gathered information to their colleagues. Also, a strict restriction considering entering the Hokage's Office after certain time of the day had been agreed on. They had a village the size of a small growing city to run, for goodness sake, they couldn't afford sending their bleeding staff to infirmary whenever Rokudaime-sama and Umino-san were feeling frisky during the night shift. Of course they all knew that the subjects of their discussion were in the middle of an unofficial honeymoon phase, but many accounted that little detail merely in order to press more firmly on the facts that led to action for their staff's benefit.  
  
It had taken Hatake-sama a visit to the Administration to find out that the nondescript and subtly warded hole of a letterbox which had been cut into the wall beside his office door and connected to the jutsu-keyed, fire-red mailbox that had been bolted inside his office had not been a strange practical joke but a carefully measured action to keep the nins working with the village affairs somewhat sane and healthy.  
  
On the other hand, seeing the ripples of mortification surfacing on Umino-san's otherwise schooled facial features whenever he had come down to the Administration after the story of their little tryst had made through the office's grapevine had been a sight that many desk nins cherished in their memories for some time.  
  
However, as the nins on the morning shift currently observed the exchanged looks that were loaded with more than just a promise of a good day at work between their silver-haired leader and the dark-haired academician as Hatake-sama and Umino-san went their separate ways, one of them glumly noted that there had not been a kiss shared between the two smiling men. That in turn made others resign themselves for an unproductive afternoon for the following shift, which meant that the unlucky draw of double workload had been bestowed on their slumping shoulders. Since, as they had all noticed after the Intel Department had analyzed the first data of their first three-week observation rounds, Hatake-sama and Umino-san, despite their respective careers and awe-inspiring survival stories when it came to the average death-rate of a shinobi, were men who liked to play many childish games. Harassing the administrative teams with clones and throwing them off their scent on the days when they caught onto their spying game was one of them, many had noted in their flippantly worded reports.  
  
However, there was a particular game that no one at the Administration could be said to be very fond of, considering the collateral damage it always caused.  
  
They had dubbed it _The_ _Ten-Count_.  
  
As far as they had managed to deduct, the Ten-Count started the second when the two men refrained from kissing each other at the beginning of the day. From there it carried throughout the day until the moment when one of them snapped and kissed the other silly, with all the energy that came from the bittersweet joy of the game poured into the kiss. Furthermore, that was everybody's cue to understand that Hokage-sama would have no visitors for forty-five minutes, should the kiss happen in the middle of the office rush hour – which usually lead to many uncomfortable encounters between the ANBU and the foreign emissaries who had made an appointment for the day. That in itself would have been a sufficient thorn on the side for everybody working at the Tower, yet many also found themselves pulled amidst the little game of patience, whether they wanted it or not.  
  
As it was, on the day of the Ten-Count, the morning shift went relatively smoothly, considering that Hatake-sama gave his attention to his workers and set things rolling for the day by seeing through admissions, assigning missions, accepting requisition orders and dictating diplomatic responses, which gave the man no time to lose himself on the road of life that lead to his lover's full-lipped mouth. Alas, things started to go rapidly downhill after the first break for the day, which was signaled by a runner who came bearing the early noon reports from the Academy. Nobody had been able to see what it was that had been written on the scroll the runner always carried on their person, but the gleam of unholy glee in the gray eyes and the low chuckle from Hatake-sama after the seconds of the clock had slowly ticked ten regrettably left very little for the imagination. Surely enough, Hatake-sama sent his written answer with the runner, which made the nins spotting the signal from the knowing runner report the estimated time for Umino-san's arrival to all of their colleagues through intercom.  
  
True to Umino-san's feared pedantic nature, the dark-skinned tokubetsu usually made his appearance five minutes before the lunch hour to pick up Hatake-sama for their lunch date. On the day of the Ten-Count, however, the mentioned tokubetsu made his appearance with take away, the man sauntering into Hokage Tower with unrepentant grace in his posture and an added sway of the narrow hips, and innocently inquired from the reception desk if there was nothing important as, say, alliance negotiations, going on in Hatake-sama's office. The receptionists on shift knew that the sharp-witted headmaster could sniff out a lie from a mile away, so all they could do when they watched the smugly grinning tokubetsu carefully counting to ten before he took the stairs to the Tower's upper floors was to raise the alarm to all departments, with an addition of ANBU.  
  
Those who had witnessed the way the men eyed each other over ramen had been given a very unwanted way of viewing the said dish. There should not be so much blatant flirting put into slurping noodles and wiping broth off one's lips with suggestive fingers. Futhermore, the silent count to ten whenever impishly glinting dark brown eyes met deceivingly bored gray ones over the steaming food was as loud as the clock ticking on the Hokage's office wall. In a very bizarre way it was almost cute to see Hatake-sama smirk fondly at the sigh of Umino-san tapping chopsticks against his wet lips, some said over their own lunch, but they all agreed that the states into which the two idiots managed to provoke each other while eating came with severe consequences to the office ranks.  
  
Namely, after the headmaster had eventually left the Tower to attend other business, Rokudaime Hokage-sama's concentration was shot to hell for the rest of the day. For their passing comfort, some had heard that it went the same way for Umino-san at the Academy. Files were put in wrong piles, wrong topics were discussed with the members of the staff, both men kept staring at the clocks during their meetings, and nobody wanted to guess where the occasional slivers of blush that dusted their cheeks originated from.  
  
If luck was truly against the desk ranks, Umino-san would attend the same meeting with Rokudaime-sama, which not only made the air thick with tension that made many itch for a kunai to cut through it, but those who caught onto the subtle glances and quirked eyebrows that spoke of a silent challenge or the demure sips of tea that turned the discreet act of seduction into a painfully obvious fact were not able to focus any longer on the matters that had been discussed.  
  
Some admitted that the anticipation for something to happen made it all sweeter when it did happen, but even those romantic souls turned sour when their well-oiled routine was derailed by the two lovebirds.  
  
As it was, the Ten-Count's recorded scores held it 9 to 7, to Umino-san's noted favor. Not many were surprised, considering that the tan man had had Uzumaki Naruto and other members of the Rookie Nine in his class.  
  
At the end of the afternoon, however, as an office nin from Accounting Department took a swift turn away from the doorway to Rokudaime's office and closed the door silently after himself even though he doubted that either of the men currently in the room could hear him, the man felt his mouth twitch into a small smile despite the slightly unsettling event he had just moments ago stumbled upon. As he dropped the files he had been delivering into the letterbox before he made his way back to Administration to put yet another point to Hatake-sama, he made sure to inform others that the Ten-Count had been finished for the day with a rather unorthodox maneuver from their Rokudaime's side that had lead to the crumbling of Umino-san's legendary self-control.  
  
After all, the elite superior commander of their ranks wasn't called as the man of thousand tactics for nothing.


End file.
